>> Wait, this sounds like a conversation with the Mafia:>> >> "Pay us protection money.">> "Why do we need to pay you for protection?">> "So we can protect you from criminals like ourselves."> > That's a ridiculous comparison and it weakens your argument. Leaving a

Reductio ad absurdum is often enlightening.

> potential problem in place rather than fixing it as I did would be the> passive-aggressive approach, not the other way around.

But that's not exactly what you're doing - you're replacing one (very small) problem with another (very real) problem, the breakage of people's patches. Fixing up patches because of spellingerrors is a total waste of developer's time.

>> I'd rather solve this problem by making standalone spelling fixes and>> other cosmetic changes taboo. Cosmetic changes combined with actual>> useful code changes are fine with me. If you're risking breaking the>> build, there should be some benefit that justifies the risk.> > Breaking the build is a low probability (many hundreds of fixes and one > build break AFAIK) and low consequence failure (a build fix of that> nature is obvious and quickly and easily done).

Breaking the build is indeed a low probability (assuming you compiletest your tree). Breaking other people's patches is a high probablility.